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Given our government's not very excellent management of Social Security I wouldn't bet on them wisely spending on renewables when there are all kinds of other t

Given our government's not very excellent management of Social Security I wouldn't bet on them wisely spending on renewables when there are all kinds of other things the money could be spent on. As such I'm a bit skeptical of your proposal. EDIT: sarcasm removed

AnthonyMouse 13y ago
"The government screws everything up" is not an argument, unless the point of the argument is that we shouldn't have a government. We know the government is capable of doing bad things, but unless we intend for them to do nothing whatsoever, the idea is to do what we can to have them do something good rather than something bad. For example, the problem here is "how can we subsidize renewable energy efficiently." Obviously there are plenty of stupid ways to do that. See: Solyndra. Let me suggest a better alternative: Forget about which companies should get money or qualifications or anything of that nature. Just take the money from the tax and give it to the people generating electricity from non-fossil sources in proportion to the number of kilowatt hours they push into the power grid. No complicated rules, no governments speculating about which companies are going to succeed or fail, just this: you produce a KWh from solar/wind/hydro/whatever, you get a check. The end.
- msandford 13y ago
  And I wouldn't mind too much if what you're suggesting happened. But I've seen too much politics to bring myself to believe that it could get passed just like that, with no loopholes, pork, or other corruption. You could structure it as a 95% of payments in go out to renewables producers. But the problem there is it doesn't provide any kind of stable payment structure for the renewables folks to structure their 10-50 year financing on. If you set $x/kWh that's fine at first blush, but we could easily run into a situation with a big surplus (which goes into general coffers and is probably spent on wars) or a big deficit (which we definitely can't afford). I like the idea but I can't see any way to implement it that doesn't end in tears in some way or another.
  - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
    >But I've seen too much politics to bring myself to believe that it could get passed just like that, with no loopholes, pork, or other corruption. There is a natural law that applies to politics as much as anything: If you think you can't do it, you don't try. And you can't do it if you don't try. >You could structure it as a 95% of payments in go out to renewables producers. But the problem there is it doesn't provide any kind of stable payment structure for the renewables folks to structure their 10-50 year financing on. I don't see how the volatility there would be any worse than the normal volatility in the energy market -- if anything it's a hedge against it because the primary method that could cause the subsidy to be reduced would be as a result of renewables rapidly supplanting fossil fuels, and in that scenario the renewables market is booming and the subsidy is less important.
    - msandford 13y ago
      >There is a natural law that applies to politics as much as anything: If you think you can't do it, you don't try. And you can't do it if you don't try. I agree with this. It's absolutely true. That said, I don't agree that government is necessarily the right place to "try" things as the nature of government is fundamentally VERY different than product design or other entrepreneurial endeavors. If you have a theory about how the business world should be and you fail, the company folds and it's undone. If a law is passed and it's imperfect, bad, or horrible we'll likely have to live with it forever or nearly so. The majority of the laws ever passed are still on the books today. The Patriot Act and the Brady Bill are the only two things I can think of that had an automatic expiration. In other words, in markets there is virtually no hysteresis. When talking about conglomerates or other big, big businesses there is definitely some. When dealing with the law, hysteresis is the rule not the exception. It is for that reason I find I am always hesitant to argue that we simply have to pass "A law stating X" and that we can fix things.
  - darklight 13y ago
    The UK has been doing just this for the last three years: people get paid for all renewable KwH they generate - even those they use themselves. It's cut the ROI for renewables to 5-10 years in many cases - and 'free' energy and income thereafter. http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Generating-energy/Getting-money-back/Feed-In-Tariffs-scheme-FITs http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Generating-energy/Gettin...

AnthonyMouse 13y ago

"The government screws everything up" is not an argument, unless the point of the argument is that we shouldn't have a government. We know the government is capable of doing bad things, but unless we intend for them to do nothing whatsoever, the idea is to do what we can to have them do something good rather than something bad. For example, the problem here is "how can we subsidize renewable energy efficiently." Obviously there are plenty of stupid ways to do that. See: Solyndra. Let me suggest a better alternative: Forget about which companies should get money or qualifications or anything of that nature. Just take the money from the tax and give it to the people generating electricity from non-fossil sources in proportion to the number of kilowatt hours they push into the power grid. No complicated rules, no governments speculating about which companies are going to succeed or fail, just this: you produce a KWh from solar/wind/hydro/whatever, you get a check. The end.

msandford 13y ago
And I wouldn't mind too much if what you're suggesting happened. But I've seen too much politics to bring myself to believe that it could get passed just like that, with no loopholes, pork, or other corruption. You could structure it as a 95% of payments in go out to renewables producers. But the problem there is it doesn't provide any kind of stable payment structure for the renewables folks to structure their 10-50 year financing on. If you set $x/kWh that's fine at first blush, but we could easily run into a situation with a big surplus (which goes into general coffers and is probably spent on wars) or a big deficit (which we definitely can't afford). I like the idea but I can't see any way to implement it that doesn't end in tears in some way or another.
- AnthonyMouse 13y ago
  >But I've seen too much politics to bring myself to believe that it could get passed just like that, with no loopholes, pork, or other corruption. There is a natural law that applies to politics as much as anything: If you think you can't do it, you don't try. And you can't do it if you don't try. >You could structure it as a 95% of payments in go out to renewables producers. But the problem there is it doesn't provide any kind of stable payment structure for the renewables folks to structure their 10-50 year financing on. I don't see how the volatility there would be any worse than the normal volatility in the energy market -- if anything it's a hedge against it because the primary method that could cause the subsidy to be reduced would be as a result of renewables rapidly supplanting fossil fuels, and in that scenario the renewables market is booming and the subsidy is less important.
  - msandford 13y ago
    >There is a natural law that applies to politics as much as anything: If you think you can't do it, you don't try. And you can't do it if you don't try. I agree with this. It's absolutely true. That said, I don't agree that government is necessarily the right place to "try" things as the nature of government is fundamentally VERY different than product design or other entrepreneurial endeavors. If you have a theory about how the business world should be and you fail, the company folds and it's undone. If a law is passed and it's imperfect, bad, or horrible we'll likely have to live with it forever or nearly so. The majority of the laws ever passed are still on the books today. The Patriot Act and the Brady Bill are the only two things I can think of that had an automatic expiration. In other words, in markets there is virtually no hysteresis. When talking about conglomerates or other big, big businesses there is definitely some. When dealing with the law, hysteresis is the rule not the exception. It is for that reason I find I am always hesitant to argue that we simply have to pass "A law stating X" and that we can fix things.
- darklight 13y ago
  The UK has been doing just this for the last three years: people get paid for all renewable KwH they generate - even those they use themselves. It's cut the ROI for renewables to 5-10 years in many cases - and 'free' energy and income thereafter. http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Generating-energy/Getting-money-back/Feed-In-Tariffs-scheme-FITs http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Generating-energy/Gettin...